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Spurs boss returns to Chelsea with Champions League hopes hanging in the balance, although failure won't mean the end

Andre Villas-Boas knows what is coming. Heading back to SW6 for the first time since being ignominiously sacked 14 months ago, he accepts the judgement will be black or white.

Win, become the first Spurs manager to triumph at the Bridge since Terry Venables in 1990, put Tottenham in charge of their Champions League destiny, and Villas-Boas will receive at least some accolades.

Draw, or even worse, lose, and the barrage will come. How can fourth not be good enough for Harry Redknapp, but fifth is good enough for his successor? He’s a failure. He should be sacked.

Yet within the Spurs bubble, at the club’s sparkling new training ground at Enfield, in the dressing room and the White Hart Lane boardroom, the picture could not be more different.

Of course, Spurs want Champions League football. After all, a bigger income stream will help with the costs of the new 56,000 stadium being built behind the Park Lane stand.

Anything less WILL be a disappointment from a side that has had the Footballer of the Year in majestic, magnificent, astonishing form for months.

But if Spurs crash and burn, Daniel Levy has no interest in summoning Villas-Boas to his office for a chat ending in him being offered a piece of paper to sign.

The outside world may wish to see this as the game that will vindicate Villas-Boas or simply bolster the case for Redknapp, irrespective of what has happened at QPR this season.

Within the upper echelons of N17, though, the view is very different. The club believes it now has the manager it needs.

A manager, too, who has learned the lessons that needed to be learned, gone about his business in a very different way from his brief spell at Chelsea.

And, statistically at least, who can argue he has achieved already. Never before have Spurs accrued 65 points, their current tally, after 35 games, just five short of the club record they managed under Redknapp in 2009-10.

If that is not enough for fourth, it will still hurt, especially after what happened last May, when, for the only time in the past decade, fourth place did not mean the Champions League.

But where Villas-Boas left a Chelsea dressing room that was badly divided - his rift with Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole was fatal - at Spurs he has created unity.

At Chelsea, he found resistance from a side that, with good reason, believed it knew what was required to win. At Tottenham, in contrast, he has encountered players who wanted to listen and discovered he is open and honest with them, telling them the truth, owning up to his errors.

At the start of the season, Villas-Boas told Michael Dawson, whom he had named as club captain, that he was unlikely to play much and that Spurs had accepted QPR’s £9million offer.

Dawson was hurt, bitterly. But told Villas-Boas he did not want to leave, that he wanted to stay and prove him wrong. The manager promised that, were the defender to be proven right, he would tell everybody. Within a couple of months, he made good that promise. It fostered a renewed respect, a new bond.

Players believed they could trust him, his personal relationship with Gareth Bale appearing as if it will be the tipping point in the Welshman’s likely decision to commit to one more year at Spurs.

Villas-Boas himself - rather than through his media team - wrote the menu programme tribute piece in honour of Bale for Thursday’s FWA Footballer of the Year dinner. He will also, with delight, speak at the event.

Maybe it helps that Villas-Boas has also realised he cannot go hammer and tongs at everything. Working from 7am until 9pm or later, even sleeping in a pod at Cobham, only helped bolster the image of him being more of a hamster, running full pelt on a wheel, than a controlled manager.

At Spurs, he is different. Giving players time to attend to family events, clocking off himself at 4pm to spend time with his own family. Having a life outside football and his motorbikes.

Those silly points frittered away at the start of the season, against West Brom, Norwich and Wigan, as well as the back-to-back defeats by Liverpool and Fulham, could prove very costly.

But it has been noted that Villas-Boas was constructing a new team. Hugo Lloris was replacing Brad Friedel, Younes Kaboul (injury) and Ledley King (retired) barely kicked a ball between them, Luca Modric and Rafael Van Der Vaart left, Sandro, the key midfield component, has been out since January.Every team has to deal with change and injuries, of course. The key element, though, is the relationship between manager and chairman.

Levy has an office at the new complex, the pair meet virtually every day, discuss, decide. His relationship with Redknapp was only ever a marriage of convenience, although Spurs stood by the manager through the long drawn-out legal battle that ended on the day Fabio Capello quit.

Redknapp’s record of fourth-fifth-fourth was the best of any Spurs boss since Bill Nicholson but his response to those two events proved pivotal.

Levy, the hierarchy and a number of players believed the manager lost his club focus in his lobbying for the England job that went to Roy Hodgson.

Whether that was true or not - Redknapp vehemently argues otherwise - a 10-point advantage over Arsenal slipped away.

But what spelled the end was his response to personal tragedy. On the very day that Levy was burying his mother, Redknapp - who might perhaps have been wearing a sombre suit rather than waving a metal driver in front of the cameras - made a public pitch for a new contract.

Villas-Boas will not make any such mistakes. When he has the chairman’s ear, he does not need to. It means he can ignore, too, whatever barbs come his way tomorrow.

If he can prove Roman Abramovich wrong, he will show how good it feels. If not, he will go back with a view to making up for it next time round. No panic at Spurs. Not this year.

What the people at Chelsea should remember is that in his attempts to build a new team he made some good signings not least Juan Mata who was in the running for player of the year. I now look forward to what he does for us in the summer.

What the people at Chelsea should remember is that in his attempts to build a new team he made some good signings not least Juan Mata who was in the running for player of the year. I now look forward to what he does for us in the summer.

Dead right mate, no matter what happens this term, his been deprived of the spine of our team in Kaboul and from January Sandro + a host of injuries and players like Moutinho that he wanted to bring in, its a miracle we are where we are, sure his making some mistakes, but when was the last time we took 4 points of Manure in a season.

avb took time to settle in getting to know the sqaud he got in harrys demise , the man has done good just watching him at games and the passion he shows when spurs are mixng it with the best of them .the man can be proud of what he has done with the squad long live avb at the lane .

Great post Lought, and what a joy to read the replies giving AVB the support he deserves. I have a feeling that no matter where we finish this season, the club is in very good hands and that not in the to distant future he will lead Spurs to glory. I have to agree with nhg72 about the passion that AVB shows and it is great to see this in a manager. I also see he has had a pop at the gooners keeper Scheneskey or what ever his bl--dy name is for more or less saying we do not have the quality to finish in the top four. AVB stated that how can a player who has only been at the club a couple of seasons have so much hatred towards Spurs. I pray that this statement from this pr-t is passed onto our players and that they go all out in the game against Chelsea to prove this mouthy pr-t wrong. I have said before about my brother in law becoming a gooner supporter after being a Spurs supporter just because he won money on them when they did the double in was it 1971?. He was listening to our game against Southampton whilst wearing his headphones cheering on the saints, happy as a sand piper. When Bale scored a few minutes from the end he through his headphones across the room , what a creep. Oh how I pray we finish above them just so I can rub salt into his wounds.

_________________“I have been here since I was a boy, I have always considered it my Club and have always found it hard to imagine wearing the shirt of another team," Ledley King 2012 (any Spurs fan would say the same)

len avb will be a great at the lane like his straight talkin no rubbish approach to the media interveiws he gives .i realy admire the way he stood firm and never gave any indication to the chelsea boo boys , just goes to show his maturity for a man with a lot of pressue avb will be a long serving manger and im convinced he will bring the glory we deserve to the mighy whites . with us not getting a striker in january my levy has something up his sleave and will be a shock signing this summer you see if im wrong i will eat one of my wifes sunday roasts and that is something i dont want lol